I love seeing how smaller organizations are thinking big and not getting caught up in "this is an enterprise tool" mindset. I think its a wonderful thing that big data analytics is becoming more accessible to all organizations, not just enterprises. After all, its a lot of the smaller startups that are showing how these technologies can provide new ways to delivering value to customers, as shown in Paytronix's case with restaurant analytics.

This follow-up interview was prompted in part by questions collegues at AllAnalytics asked during this video interview. What I didn't know, at that point, was that Paytronix had backed off a plan to move its Hadoop cluster from the cloud to on-premises. As I note in the story, event giant companies are keeping clusters in the cloud, so it's not shocking to see a sub-100-employee company sticking with the cloud option (for now). What's more suprising is how few people the company needed to bring this platform into the mix -- just one one new employee. What's more, one of the company's data group veterans is really leading the way, and he and his colleagues have taken to a new platform without much of a problem, according to CEO Robbins. Keep this in mind when before assuming -- or before somebody tries to tell you -- that it's all a hard, dark science that will require armies of new people.

To learn more about what organizations are doing to tackle attacks and threats we surveyed a group of 300 IT and infosec professionals to find out what their biggest IT security challenges are and what they're doing to defend against today's threats. Download the report to see what they're saying.

Is DevOps helping organizations reduce costs and time-to-market for software releases? What's getting in the way of DevOps adoption? Find out in this InformationWeek and Interop ITX infographic on the state of DevOps in 2017.

Chances are your organization is adopting cloud computing in one way or another -- or in multiple ways. Understanding the skills you need and how cloud affects IT operations and networking will help you adapt.